Clause Five

He sent for them all at three, and they all came.

He sent Bramwell, on foot, with a list, and Bramwell went round Annapolis in the white heat of the afternoon from door to door like a man delivering summonses, which in a sense he was. He went to Carvel Hall for La Guardia and to the Premier’s rooms on Maryland Avenue for Ritchie and to the Superintendent’s house in the Yard and to the boarding house on Francis Street where Aldridge of the Sun was asleep with his boots on. He went to the federal enforcement service’s district office, which was a single room over a hardware shop on West Street with a telephone and a calendar, and found Spratt at the desk writing his report. He went to the boathouse of the Academy, where Voss was writing his report too, at a bench among the shells, with a towel round his neck, explaining to the coxswain of the Academy crew in writing how the second-best racing shell in the boathouse had come to have a split strake.

He did not go to the City Dock. Warren went to the City Dock.

At three o’clock they were all in the drawing room of Government House, and the doors were shut.

---

It was a long cool room on the garden side, with tall windows open on to the terrace and the magnolia, and blinds half drawn, and chairs with faded green silk, and a piano nobody played, and a portrait of the old Queen over the fireplace looking down at them all with an expression of mild and permanent surprise. The footman had brought lemonade. Nobody had drunk it.

Tull was in the big chair by the fireplace, in his grey suit, with his Bible on his knee, where he had put it down when he came in from chapel and had forgotten to pick it up again. He had come back from chapel at half past twelve happy. He had been happy at lunch. He had heard nothing; nobody had told him; Mrs Tull had seen to that, and had sat beside him at lunch and talked about the hymns. He was happy now, in a puzzled way, because he did not know why he had been sent for, and because he was the Lieutenant-Governor and the drawing room was his and it was proper that the Governor-General should hold whatever this was in it, and he was looking round at all of them with the expression of a man who has been invited to his own surprise party and is too polite to say he has guessed.

Mrs Tull was standing behind his chair, with one hand on the back of it.

Ritchie was by the window, leaning on the frame, with his arms folded and his eyes on the garden. The Superintendent was on the sofa, red-faced, in his whites, with his cap on his knee. Aldridge was in a corner, sitting very upright on a hard chair, with his notebook closed on his lap and both hands flat on top of it, as though it might get away. Spratt was standing by the door, in his brown suit, in his capacity. Voss was standing by the other door, in his grey suit, with the towel gone and a clean collar on, very pale. Warren was on the window seat with his neck in Mrs Tull’s white silk scarf and his knees up. Bramwell was at the writing table with his notebook open.

And La Guardia was in the middle of the room, on a small gilt chair that was much too small for him, in his black suit with his collar on again and his hat on his knee, sitting perfectly still, with his eyes on the Governor-General, and saying nothing at all, which nobody in the room had ever seen him do.

Pershing stood in front of the fireplace, under the old Queen, and took the card out of his breast pocket.

“Your Honour,” he said. “Mr Premier. Admiral. Gentlemen. Mrs Tull.”

The room was very quiet.

“On Friday evening in this house,” said Pershing, “at the Lieutenant-Governor’s table, the Member for East Harlem proposed, and the Lieutenant-Governor accepted, a demonstration. The terms were written by me, read out, and agreed by both parties. I was appointed referee. I accepted the appointment on condition that if there was a question I would answer it, and that once I had answered it nobody would argue.” He looked round the room. “There is a question. I will answer it.”

Nobody moved.

“One,” he read. “Served: handed to the party by another person, and drunk. At about twelve minutes past twelve today, at the altar rail of the church of St Anne on Church Circle, a cup was handed to a communicant by the curate of that church, and drunk.”

Tull’s face did not change. He was listening with polite and kindly attention, as he would have listened to the lesson.

“Two. A drink: intoxicating liquor within the meaning of the Act. Lawful or unlawful. What was in the cup was wine, supplied under permit for sacramental use. It is intoxicating liquor within the meaning of the Act. It is lawful. Lawfulness is not a matter on which the referee rules.”

Something moved in Tull’s face. It was very small. It was the faint puzzled crease between his eyebrows that Pershing had seen at the foot of the church steps that morning, looking at the brick.

“Three. Within sight of Government House on State Circle, in the City of Annapolis: at a place from which Government House can be seen by the naked eye, without glass, in the light then prevailing. Any dispute to be settled by the referee standing at that place.” Pershing paused. “I stood at that place. At the top of the chancel steps of St Anne’s, below the rail, at about thirteen minutes past twelve. I looked down the aisle and through the west door, which was open. I could see the porch of this house, and its columns, and the flag above it. By the naked eye. Without glass. In the light then prevailing.” He did not look at La Guardia. “It is within sight.”

“Oh,” said Tull, very quietly.

It was not a word, quite. It was the sound a man makes when he has been walking along in the dark and has put his foot down on a stair that is not there.

He looked round the room. He looked at La Guardia on his little gilt chair, perfectly still. He looked at Ritchie, at the window, who did not turn round. He looked at his wife. Mrs Tull’s hand on the back of his chair did not move.

“Mr La Guardia went to the rail,” said Tull. “He went to church. He took the Sacrament. Within sight.” His voice was soft and quite steady. “Oh, my goodness. Oh, I never thought of it. I never once thought of it. The Sacrament.” He looked down at the Bible on his knee as if he had never seen it before. “Of course. Of course he did. It’s the only drink in Maryland I couldn’t stop. The Rector gives it every first Sunday. I’ve seen him through that door for six years.” He looked up at Pershing with an expression of the most complete, bewildered honesty. “He has won, Your Excellency. Hasn’t he? He’s quite right. He’s won.”

“Mr La Guardia,” said Pershing, “did not go to the rail.”

---

There was a silence of perhaps four seconds.

“Mr La Guardia,” said Pershing, “was on the top step of the church, in the west door, from about half past eleven until the end of the service, under arrest by Mr Voss, who was under arrest by Mr Spratt. He did not enter the church. He was not served. He has not been served anything, within sight of this house or out of it, since the wager was made, except twenty-two oysters on the City Dock and a quantity of Smith Island water at the top of a mast, neither of which is intoxicating within the meaning of the Act.” He looked at Voss. “Is that correct, Mr Voss?”

“That is correct, Your Excellency,” said Voss, in a very small voice.

“Mr Spratt?”

“Correct, Your Excellency.”

“Then who was served?” said Tull.

Pershing looked at the card in his hand.

“Five,” he read. “The referee is not a party. Should the referee himself be served, the wager is void.”

He put the card down on the mantelpiece, under the old Queen.

“The communicant at the rail at twelve minutes past twelve,” he said, “was the referee. He went first. It was in the programme.” He folded his hands behind his back. “The referee has been served a drink within sight of Government House before Monday. Under clause five the wager is void. There is no winner. There is no loser. There is no forfeit. That is my ruling.”

---

Nobody spoke.

The Superintendent, on the sofa, had his cap halfway to his mouth, as though he had been about to bite it. Aldridge’s hands had gone flat and white on his notebook. Warren, on the window seat, had his face turned toward the garden and his shoulders were shaking very slightly, and it was not, Pershing thought, entirely laughter. Ritchie, at the window, had not moved at all, except that his head had gone down, slowly, until his forehead rested against the glass.

And Tull sat in his big chair by his own fireplace with his Bible on his knee and looked up at the Governor-General, and his face went through, in the space of perhaps ten seconds, more than Pershing had seen any man’s face go through since the war.

It went first to relief. Pure, uncomplicated, enormous relief; it came up into his round pink face like the sun, and his shoulders came down, and he let out a breath that he must have been holding since the word Sacrament, and he said, “Void. Oh, thank God. Void,” and put his hand on his Bible, flat, as if to steady it.

And then it went somewhere else.

Pershing watched it go. He watched Tull sit in his chair with his hand on his Bible and think, slowly, honestly, because he was the most honest man in Maryland and could not stop himself, all the way through what he had just been told: that he had not won; that the only reason he had not lost was that the Governor-General of the Realm had gone to church; that for two days the whole of Annapolis had been trying to serve a drink within sight of his house, the Premier and the watermen and the Academy and a physician from Baltimore, and he had stopped none of it, not one thing, he had been asleep or at chapel or at the Ball or pouring punch on Mrs Brice’s azaleas without knowing what it was; that the federal service had been holding the line in his name with four men and a bucket; and that the one drink in the whole of Maryland that could be had within sight of his house, lawfully, at noon, on a Sunday, in front of everybody, had been handed out at the rail of the King’s church by an old man he had known for twenty years, every first Sunday, through an open door, while he sat in his chapel round the corner with a glass of grape juice and gave thanks that Maryland kept the law.

“Maryland,” said Tull, at last, very quietly, to his Bible, “keeps the law in church.”

Nobody answered him.

“Only in church,” said Tull. He looked up. His eyes were wet. “Is that right, Your Excellency? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“I am telling you the wager is void, Your Honour.”

“Yes. Yes, I know. Thank you.” Tull nodded several times, slowly. “But that’s what it means. Isn’t it.”

Pershing did not answer. It was not a question he could answer. It was not on the card.

Behind the chair, Mrs Tull took her hand off the back of it and put it on her husband’s shoulder, and left it there.

---

It was La Guardia who broke it. Of course it was La Guardia.

He had not moved since Pershing began. He had sat on the little gilt chair with his hat on his knee and his eyes on the Governor-General through all of it, through the clauses and the ruling and Tull’s face, without a word, without a sound, which in La Guardia was a kind of physical feat, like holding one’s breath under water. Now he stood up. The gilt chair creaked with relief.

He crossed the room to the big chair by the fireplace, and stood in front of the Lieutenant-Governor of Maryland, and looked down at him, which he could do, for once, because Tull was sitting.

“Your Honour,” he said. His voice was quite low. “I don’t win.”

“No.”

“And you don’t win.”

“No.”

“So I don’t have to stand up in the Commons on Tuesday and say Maryland keeps the law.”

“No,” said Tull.

“And you don’t have to stand up in the Assembly and say I was right.”

“No.”

La Guardia looked at him a moment longer. Then he put out his hand.

“Then I’ll tell you something for nothing,” he said. “Not on the record. You were wrong about Maryland. But you’re the only man in the whole of this Province who meant it. And I’d rather have one of you than a hundred of the other kind.” He held his hand out until Tull took it. “Grape juice and all.”

Tull shook it. He shook it the way he had shaken the Governor-General’s on the platform on Friday, pumping, as if he expected water, and his eyes were still wet, and he said, “Thank you, Mr La Guardia. Thank you. That’s very kind,” and went on shaking it for some time after it would have been natural to stop.

---

The rest went quickly.

Voss withdrew everything. He stood by his door with his grey notebook in his hand and withdrew, in a clear voice, without being asked, the arrest of Mr La Guardia, the arrest of Agent Spratt on the State House lawn, the arrest of Agent Spratt in the harbour, and the arrest of Mr Purnell the chandler, and asked that his withdrawals be noted, and Bramwell noted them. Spratt, by his door, withdrew the arrest of Mr Voss on the church steps and the arrest of Mr Voss on the State House lawn and the arrest of Mr Aldridge of the Sun for possession of coffee, and asked that his be noted, and they were.

“And the bucket, Your Excellency?” said Spratt. “It is in the custody of the referee. There are two receipts.”

“The bucket will remain where it is.”

“Where is it, Your Excellency?”

“In the cellar,” said Mrs Tull, from behind her husband’s chair.

Tull turned his head.

“We have a cellar?”

“We have a cellar, Wesley,” said Mrs Tull, perfectly calmly. “It is where the coal is.”

“Oh. Yes. Of course.” Tull nodded. “The coal.”

Ritchie, at the window, made a sound into the glass that might have been a cough.

“Mr Voss,” said Pershing. “There is a car to New Westminster at five-forty. You will be on it.”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

“Your report to the Bureau will state that you were sent to Annapolis to look into a report of a conspiracy to transport intoxicating liquor to Government House, and that you found none.”

Voss was silent for a moment. Then something happened behind his rimless spectacles that was, Pershing thought, the first time in his young life that Leland Voss had understood that a report could be entirely true and say nothing.

“Yes, Your Excellency,” he said. “That’s correct. I found none.”

“And now,” said Pershing, “the silence.”

---

He had thought about it in the pew, during the last hymn. He had thought about the Sun, and the Courier, and the gallery of the Commons, and the Assembly at Annapolis, and the class of 1926 going out into the highways and hedges of the world with this in their mouths for forty years. He had thought about a Lieutenant-Governor who meant it, and nine cannery hands, and a Governor-General who had been served. He had thought about orders that could be kept.

“Nothing happened,” he said.

He looked round the room at each of them in turn.

“There was a dinner on Friday. There were commissions on Saturday. There was a Ball. There was church this morning. That is all that happened in Annapolis this weekend. There was no wager, because a void wager is no wager. There was no demonstration. There were no terms. There is no card.” He took the card off the mantelpiece and put it back in his breast pocket. “No statement will be made by anyone in this room, in the Commons or the Assembly or the Sun or anywhere else, about anything that did not happen. I am asking each of you for your word. Not on oath. On your word, to me, aloud, now.” He paused. “Your Honour.”

“You have it,” said Tull, at once. “Nothing happened.”

“Mrs Tull.”

“You have it, Your Excellency.” She did not smile. She looked at him across the room with her hand on her husband’s shoulder, and for the first time all weekend there was something in her face, and it was on his side. “Nothing whatever.”

“Mr Premier.”

Ritchie turned round from the window at last. His eyes were red. “You have it, Your Excellency. God knows why. You have it.”

“Admiral.”

“Nothing happened,” said the Superintendent, and put his cap on. “Damned dull weekend.”

“Mr Spratt. Mr Voss.”

“Nothing happened, Your Excellency,” they said, together, and looked at each other, and away.

“Mr Aldridge.”

Aldridge stood up. He held his notebook against his chest with both hands. He looked at the Governor-General with an expression of real anguish, the face of a man who has been handed the best story of his life and asked to drop it off the end of the City Dock.

“You have my word, Your Excellency,” he said. “Nothing happened.” He paused. “Can I say that it passed quietly?”

Pershing considered it.

“You may say that June Week passed quietly,” he said. “Because it did.”

“Mr La Guardia.”

La Guardia had gone back to his little gilt chair. He did not sit on it. He stood beside it with his hat in his hand and looked at the Governor-General with the expression he had worn in the doorway of St Anne’s at thirteen minutes past twelve, and for a moment Pershing thought he was going to refuse.

“General,” said La Guardia.

“Governor-General.”

“No,” said La Guardia. “General. Just this once.” He turned his hat round in his hands. “You have my word. Nothing happened. I’ll never say it in the House. I’ll never say it in East Harlem. I’ll never say it to anybody as long as I live.” He put his hat on. “But I want you to know that I know.”

“Warren.”

His son, on the window seat, turned his face from the garden. It was wet, and he did not wipe it.

“You have my word, sir,” said Warren. “I’m good at it now.”

“Captain Tyler?”

“I went to the dock, sir,” said Warren. “Before. You told me to. He said to tell you: Nothing happened. Never does, on Smith Island.” He paused. “And he said it would be a long weekend, and it was.”

“Mr Bramwell.”

Bramwell, at the writing table, closed his notebook.

“Sir,” he said, “I have no record of anything.”

Pershing stood a moment longer under the portrait of the old Queen, with his hands behind his back, and looked at them all: the Lieutenant-Governor in his chair with his wife’s hand on his shoulder and his Bible on his knee; the Premier at the window with his red eyes; the Admiral; the reporter; the two federal men by their two doors; his secretary; his son; and La Guardia, short and wide and black-suited, standing by a gilt chair, with his hat on, looking at him.

“Thank you,” he said. “That is all.”

And they went out, one by one, through the two doors, the federal men by different ones, into the hot afternoon; and the last to go was Mrs Tull, who stopped at the door and turned and looked back at him, standing alone under the Queen, and said, quite softly, “You were served, Your Excellency,” and he said, “I was,” and she said, “Good,” and went out, and shut the door.